Page 21

My words hung in the air between us, heavy with implication. Together. Like we were a unit now, a team, two people bound by something neither of us fully understood but both of us felt.

I turned my hand over, lacing my fingers through hers, and the feeling of her hand in mine was almost too much. Almost more than I could bear. “I think you’re right.”

We kept talking as the restaurant emptied around us. The other diners left one by one. The tables cleared; the candles burned lower. The waiter stopped coming by. The music changed from opera to something softer, jazzier. Time became fluid, meaningless. There was only her voice and her face and the feeling that I could sit here forever and never tire of listening to her speak.

She told me about the books she loved—the ones she had read so many times that the pages were falling out. About the garden her mother had kept, how Madigan still tended it even though her father said it was a waste of time. About the minor rebellions she had carved out for herself—the library visits he didn’t know about, the walks she took when he thought she was in her room, the dreams she kept locked away where he couldn’t touch them.

But it was getting harder to focus on her words. Harder to think clearly. Because with every passing moment, I was becoming more aware of her. Of the way candlelight played across her skin. Of the curve of her neck. Of the way she tucked her hair behind her ear. Of the sound of her breathing. Of the faint scent of her perfume—something floral and delicate that was driving me slowly insane.

I wanted to lean across the table and kiss her. Wanted to pull her into my lap and bury my face in her hair. Wanted to know what she tasted like, what she sounded like when she sighed my name. Wanted things I had no right to want.

My heart was racing. My hands were shaking. There was an ache in my chest that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with need.

I’d never felt like this before. Never been so completely undone by another person. Never wanted something—someone—so desperately that it felt like I might die if I couldn’t have her.

I told her about the parts of my life that weren’t soaked in blood. About the way Giovanni and I used to fight when we were kids, how our cousins would try to break us up and usually ended up getting hit themselves. About my mother’s cooking, how she would make Sunday gravy that simmered for hours and filled the entire house with the smell of tomatoes and garlic. About the way my father had looked at her, like she was the only good thing in his life even as he destroyed everything else he touched.

And I listened, but I was also drowning. Drowning in the sound of her voice. In the way she gestured when she talked. In the way her eyes lit up when she spoke about something she loved. In everything about her.

“Do you think that’s possible?” Madigan asked. “To love someone and still hurt them?”

“I think it happens all the time.” I was holding her hand again. I didn’t remember reaching for it, but there it was, her fingers laced through mine, and I couldn’t let go. Wouldn’t let go.

“That’s depressing.”

“It’s honest.”

She was quiet for a moment. “I know my father doesn’t love me. I don’t think he knows what that word means. He wishes I had been a boy, but because I wasn’t, he uses it to his advantage. I’m a thing he can control, a possession he can show off. But me? The actual person? I don’t think he’s ever seen me.”

“I see you,” I said, and my voice came out raw, stripped of all pretense. “Madigan, I see you.”

She looked up, her eyes meeting mine, and the intensity of that gaze nearly broke me. “Do you?”

“Yes.” I brought her hand to my lips without thinking, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. The contact sent fire through my veins. “I see everything.”

“What do you see?”

“Someone strong. Someone brave. Someone who has survived things that would have broken most people.” I paused, my thumb stroking across her skin. “Someone beautiful. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

She blushed, looking down, but I reached across with my other hand and gently tilted her chin up. Made her look at me. Made her see the truth in my eyes.

“You don’t have to say that,” she whispered.

“I’m not saying it because I have to. I’m saying it because it’s true. Because I can’t stop thinking it. Because every time I look at you, I forget how to breathe.”

When she looked up again, there were tears in her eyes. “No one’s ever—” She stopped, shaking her head. “I don’t know what to do with this. With you. I don’t know how to...”

“You don’t have to do anything. Just be here. That’s enough.” More than enough. It’s everything.

“Is it?”

“For now.” Forever. For as long as you’ll let me.

She smiled through the tears. “You’re dangerous, you know that?”

“I’ve been told.”

“No, I mean”—she gestured between us with her free hand, the other still clasped in mine—“this. You. The way you make me feel. It’s dangerous.”